LEDYARD — It’s bad enough to have to face the Ledyard wrestling team this season at all, never mind having to face a determined Ledyard team.

Even with the potential distraction of Senior Night at Ledyard High, the Colonels were all business.

“This was probably the most focused Senior Night I’ve ever seen,” Ledyard coach Steve Bilheimer said. “Usually when it’s Senior Night, you never know what you’re going to get from the guys. (Thursday night), they just wanted to get out there and do their thing.”

The reason for the focus wasn’t necessarily the Bacon Academy team across the mat, but rather the memory of the loss to Simsbury on Saturday that knocked the Colonels from their undefeated perch and No. 2 ranking in The Bulletin wrestling poll. The now fourth-ranked Colonels used that as motivation and easily downed the Bobcats, 58-18, Wednesday night.

But that loss to Simsbury was not being looked upon as a bad thing either.|

“It was very necessary,” Ledyard wrestler Brandon Finney said. “If we had gone into the (Eastern Connecticut Conference championship) and States (undefeated), we would have been too cocky. We would have been like, ‘Yeah, we’re undefeated, we’re going to walk over everyone else,’ and then (we’d) get our butts kicked.”

Finney brought up last year as an example when the Colonels fell to Daniel Hand in the regular season and came back to win the Class M state championship. They learned from that loss to Hand last year — the loss to Simsbury, hopefully, performed the same function.

“I don’t think we were mentally quite ready for Simsbury and we made a bunch of technical errors — we’ve been working a lot to improve upon those and I think it showed somewhat (Thursday night),” Bilheimer said.

The Colonels wasted no time as they recorded wins by three pins, a major decision and a forfeit in the first five matches to bolt out to the 28-0 lead over Bacon (11-13, 4-1 ECC Large). Finney set the tone for the match when he pinned Brandon Dufour in 52 seconds in the first match at 160 pounds.

“I was hoping it would be quicker,” Finney said in a serious manner.

It actually wasn’t the fastest pin of the night, that title belonged to teammate Devin MarcAurele who took down D.J. Tartsins in 37 seconds.

The best match of the night took place between Bacon’s Howie Kilpatrick and Ledyard’s Matt Jones at 132 pounds. The two were scoreless until Kilpatrick fought his way back to neutral with less than a minute left and then added a two-point take down with 23 seconds to go for a little insurance and the 3-0 win by decision.

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“He definitely gave me a run for my money. He was a lot tougher than I expected,” Kilpatrick said.

The win put the Colonels (10-1, 4-0) atop the ECC Large Division by themselves, although the regular season is far from over. Not only do the Colonels have dual matches left with Woodstock and Waterford, but the ECC tournament also counts toward the final regular season standings.